Drafted / Brain-stormed Proposal:

Project Title:

Corridor in public housing

Inspiration:

The urban planning of HKSAR (especially those 10 years) makes me sick, torturing me. The over-high building ignores surrounding environment (including trees, old building, old streets, heritage, community activity and etc.), with some even over the level of mountain. I don’t think I am full of nostalgia.

I start experiencing and understanding how urban planning (or with smaller scale, architecture) determines our behavior and thinking. I will prefer the smaller scale, and lively spatial analysis of street (or corridors), over the big scale of urban planning. Attempt to reveal the ideology which governs the structure of urban planning.

1^st draft:

still narrowing down the research focus

Hk and Turkey (as I will go for a month, maybe as comparison)

Public space / house-used space --- how they use their space

Wet market/ supermarket

Ethnographic research

Video recording as research material

Thick description / micro-narrative / optical unconscious / analysis after filming

The power to still frame

The medium specificity / uniqueness of cinematic form over textual language

Start from below / micro / daily-practice, over big theory / grand-narrative / macro-like ideology

Regard research as process of discovery, instead of reinforcing pre-conception (otherwise, I will see only what I want and expect)

Discovery as Alienation (Bertolt Brecht)

Thus, conclusion will never be drawn before the research project

(For those are written in BLUE, are less relevant now to my project, and it maybe just for reference)

Thank for the “helpful” public housing policy of HKSAR, the strict security policy likely alienate the space of housing and street. The highly monitoring eye of security guards, the security blocking/wall(?), and even photo/video recording is not welcomed within the space of public housing.

I believe that social understanding and trust is much more important and useful than the deadly strict security policy. With regard to柏齊 (an local activist photographer), the level of social harmony, security and understanding varies directly with how often the residence themselves (NOT the security guards and companies hired by the government) use the space where they are living in and near by. When they are using the space, not only they are “taken advantages” from the space for their activities, but also “give their efforts” to monitor and take care for the space where they are enjoying. For example, as 柏齊 shared, in Shan Shi Po, an old district of Hong Kong, an old wood craftsman uses the space outside and near his shop (後巷)for making his wood-craft. Some may condemn the craftsman as illegally occupation of the public space, but if we step back and think again, the old craftsman has also served for monitoring and clearing the space. He used, therefore his eye help to watch out for any incident happened in this particular space.

Concept:

Public space (more specific: street / public estate (housing) corridor公屋走廊 (maybe even more specific for only chuk yuen estate) / the use of space )

Highest floor view (山線)

Ethnographic research for creative intervention (e.g. public exhibition / the research thesis may be sent as review(?) document to the planning department of HKSAR)

Key words:

Public space, space politics, use of space, documentary, ethnography, performance, poor theatre, Grotowski, alienation, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Peter Brook,

How the project may get started:

Drifting in the public housing (Walter Benjamin?)

Photo/video recording in friends’ public housing, and invite them to join my project as well.

Spatial analysis can be possible only if we engage and involve in the space where we analyze.

Aim:

Boost social trust

As sharing

Monitor the urban planning (no more building higher than the line of mountain, which is against the international law)

Methodology:

My approach may be like:

Practice/experience ---à negotiation ß--Theory / Ideology

Dialectics of practice and theory

Research attitude:

Regard research as process of discovery, instead of reinforcing pre-conception. Otherwise, I will see only what I want and expect.

Media chosen:

Things can be narrated and discussed only if it is mediated (e.g. become words, photos, video and etc).

Film and photo

(1) Photo / performance / video Exhibition: site-specific

Photo may be posted on the site where was captured in the photo (e.g. I take a photo of a playground, from unusual perspective of a 19-floor public estate building, and then this photo will be posted on somewhere of the playground)

(2) 1^st level of video documentation:

for observing how the residence uses the space, tend to reduce the disturbance of the space

2^nd level of video with performance:

interfere the space with “performance (art)” (may not be performing arts, but live art / happenings something that cannot be expected, and focus on how body reveal the living space, e.g. use body to visualize a space in where the ceiling is unusually higher than any other floor’s ceiling)

Local artists/ group who (may) interested in the issue:

(I think I will interview them)

柏齊 (activist local photographer, former social worker, interest in urban planning)

8a (local activist NGO)

Inmedia (Independent Media of Hong Kong)

Distribution and funding:

(If recourse is available, say funding from University)

Research will be wasteful if it cannot be distributed and reach the public.

Money will be needed for the distribution, say making hard copies (or more cheaply, online distribution, but it seems less attractive)

Blog and archive for the photos

Reference suggested:

Situational International

Benjamin

Flesh and City (which about space politics from the time of ancient Greek)

The Empty Space (written by Peter Brook)